The Cub Can Of Worms: Oscar Zamora
When the pitch is so fat
That the ball hits the bat
That's Zamora
-- sung to the tune of "That's Amore"
If you're not old enough to remember, Oscar Zamora was a smallish (5-10, 178) righthanded reliever for the mediocre-to-bad Cub teams from 1974 to 1976. A native of Cuba, he languished in the Cleveland and Houston farm systems for nine years, and was purchased by the Cubs on June 17, 1974 and installed as a sometime middle reliever, sometime closer (though closers in those days had different roles than today, often going two or three innings).
He had a decent year in '74, with a 3.12 ERA in 83.2 innings, and 10 saves, which, amazingly enough, led that 96-loss team.
But the next season and in '76, even though the team was a bit better, Oscar was awful, posting ERA's north of 5 each year (and in June '75 alone had three horrendous outings on June 4, June 13, and June 25, those three accounting for more than 25% of all the earned runs he allowed that year). This led to the little song you see at the top of this post being sung by many fans.
He wasn't any better in 1976. In early August manager Jim Marshall ran a bit short of pitchers when the Cubs had back-to-back doubleheaders in Montreal (due to two rainouts in May), so Oscar was pressed into service as a starter in the second game on August 7. He got pounded for eight hits and six runs in less than three innings, was sent to the minors and eventually signed as a free agent with the Astros, for whom he had 10 bad appearances (7.20 ERA) in 1978 and then was done.
But I'll bet you didn't know -- I didn't till I started looking for more background on Oscar for this post -- that he threw a perfect game in the minor leagues, for Triple-A Oklahoma City against Denver. No, I'm not making this up. It was a seven-inning perfect game, the second game of a doubleheader. Oddly enough, it was on the same day -- September 2, 1972 -- that Milt Pappas came one strike away from perfection for the Cubs. Several future major leaguers were on the Denver team that Oscar threw the perfecto against, including Pete Mackanin, Jeff Burroughs and future Cub Lenny Randle. (The "Steve Greenberg" listed in that boxscore is Hank Greenberg's son, who eventually founded Classic Sports Network, later sold to ESPN, and CSTV.)
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It must have been 1974
when Zamora was new on the team, and showing flashes of effectiveness… when Jack Brickhouse would comment, “We’re going to see more-a, and more-a, of Zamora.”
by ChipSet on Nov 24, 2008 9:03 AM CST reply actions 0 recs
Yeah, that was scary.
And as it turned out, we saw way too much of Oscar.
"That's my opinion and if you don't like it, well, I have others." ~ Groucho Marx
by Al on Nov 24, 2008 9:10 AM CST up reply actions 0 recs
Brick loved Oscar Zamora
I’m trying to remember, but didn’t Zamora have some sort of special pitch, like Sutter’’s split finger?
Where is Mick Kelleher when we need him?
by 3744nsheffield on Nov 24, 2008 9:48 AM CST up reply actions 0 recs
If he did, it didn't work past 1974.
"That's my opinion and if you don't like it, well, I have others." ~ Groucho Marx
by Al on Nov 24, 2008 9:55 AM CST up reply actions 0 recs
Totally forgot about this guy
What’s with the cap? Sure looks small on him.
A baseball game is simply a nervous breakdown divided into nine innings. ~Earl Wilson
by tucsoncubsfan on Nov 24, 2008 9:18 AM CST reply actions 0 recs
Looking at that card again...
… it looks like he has a non-Cub uniform on (no pinstripes). That means it was probably taken while he was wearing another team’s uniform, and that Cub cap was painted on by Topps artists. They did a lot of that in those days.
"That's my opinion and if you don't like it, well, I have others." ~ Groucho Marx
by Al on Nov 24, 2008 9:23 AM CST up reply actions 0 recs
it looks like
he’s wearing a do-rag under the hat.
"That’s the great thing about baseball, you never know what’s going to happen till you get the final out." — Lou Piniella
by drewishdrewid on Nov 24, 2008 10:06 AM CST up reply actions 0 recs
Looking closer...
… it looks like the artist who painted the cap didn’t stay within the lines.
"That's my opinion and if you don't like it, well, I have others." ~ Groucho Marx
by Al on Nov 24, 2008 10:08 AM CST up reply actions 0 recs
Ah, those great pre-photoshop Topps cards....
Rudy May’s might have been the worst, at least until the year the Mariners became a team and they had a helluva time getting the “pitchfork” right.
Whoever said you can't mix business with pleasure never owned a PuttPutt course---Andy Bernard
by carmen_fanzone on Nov 24, 2008 11:20 AM CST up reply actions 0 recs
Or like this one...
… where Topps took a Cleveland Indians logo and tried to airbrush it (in a primitive 1950’s sort of way) so it looked like a Cub logo. They didn’t get it quite right, and the colors are wrong, too:

"That's my opinion and if you don't like it, well, I have others." ~ Groucho Marx
by Al on Nov 24, 2008 1:09 PM CST up reply actions 0 recs
OZ had a chance to score 1,000,000th run
On May 4th, 1975, Zamora came in in relief of Geoff Zaun in an 8-6 win at Busch Stadium. With two outs in the 5th, OZ singled. Kessinger singled him to second base. Scoring position with the MLB run count at 999,999. Jose Cardenal had an opportunity to drive him in as the count stayed at 999,999 for a few minutes. Bottom line…he didn’t. Grounded out to 2b, unassisted….leaving Zamora stranded whilst Bob Watson ended up scoring it. Beating Dave Conception by 1.5 seconds. BUT ZAMORA HAD A CHANCE!!!!
by jimvanders on Nov 24, 2008 12:07 PM CST reply actions 0 recs
Strange 1975 Statistics; Borowski in 2007
He was 5-2 for a 75-87 team and converted 10 of 11 save chances. Save chances tended to be tougher back then. That blown save turned into one of his two losses in 1975. Looking at that, you would have thought he had a good year. That ERA of 5.07 is hard to ignore. Those awful performances that June contributed a lot to that earned run average.
That ERA of 5.07 is what Joe Borowski had for Cleveland in 2007. He was 4-5 with 45 saves and 8 blown saves. Only one of those blown saves turned into a Borowski loss. Two of those blown saves turned into Borowski wins. Those are the strangest statistics for a reliever in recent history.
"The big possum walks late." - Harry Caray
by memphiscub on Nov 24, 2008 12:32 PM CST reply actions 0 recs
Like Oscar...
… JoeBo had three really bad games: April 19, May 13 and August 14. In those three outings he gave up 14 earned runs in 1.2 innings.
Take those numbers off his 2007 totals and his ERA in his other 66 appearances is 3.23, much better.
The 5.07 ERA is, I believe the highest ERA for anyone in history with 40 or more saves in a season.
"That's my opinion and if you don't like it, well, I have others." ~ Groucho Marx
by Al on Nov 24, 2008 12:59 PM CST up reply actions 0 recs

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